Canon 1000d Lenses?

[Anguilla82]

Hi all,

look to upgrade our current camera in the next few weeks/months.
current camera is a Canon Powershot A630, which is a great little point and shoot camera but just will not allow me to get good shots of my marine inhabitants.
The colour tends to be all wrong and getting it to focus on what i want it to focus on is nigh on impossible.

for these reasons i'm looking to upgrade.
Have been looking at the Canon 1000D which is the right sort of price and comes with some good features.

is it a decent camera? are there others in the same price/features range that i should consider?

also, what lenses should i be looking at getting in order to get some real close up shots of my tanks inhabitants? think the canon comes with a 18-55mm as standard.

Rob

 

[mike os]

best thing you can do is get down to a camera shop & have a play, because all the current crop of dslr are more than good enough for most tasks and it will come down to which one "feels" right in your hands.

personally I find the canons too small & fiddly... below the pro models, but nikon fits just fine.

My advice would be to stick with nikon or canon, and avoid sony, olympus etc, not because they are bad but because there are few or no third party add ons and lenses and you will pay a big premium later should you want lenses or flash etc. Also world wide support network should something break ( although in 35 years of using slr/dslr I have never needed to use it) or need a service.

 

[BigTom]

There's no such thing as a 'bad' DSLR these days really, like Mike said go have a play with them in the flesh and see which brand you prefer in terms of ergonomics, then balance that against features/cost. Buying seocnd hand/refurbished can also be a good idea to save you some cash.

Be warned though that the camera body is only part of the story, if you want really good closeup shots of your tank inhabitants then you're going to need a dedicated macro lens and preferably an off-camera flash, at which point it all starts getting a little bit expensive! Check out the Sigma macro lenses as an alternative to Canon/Nikon, they are very good performers for significantly less cash (I use a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro on my Nikon D200). Again, second hand may well be a good idea given the recent huge price increases in photographic equipment due to the weakened pound.

 

[gaz gun man]

As stated, get down to the shops and have a look at the bodies in your price range, I chose Nikon over Canon because they felt 'better' to me at the time.

regarding lenses, you dont really need a superzoom, I took this picture on a 17-55mm at 50mm, and I think its close enough. I would'nt reccomend the kit lens though, because even with the aperture fully open, you'll only get something like f/3.5 (or there abouts) which generally wont be fast enough to shoot handheld (without flash), just using the tank-lights to cut down reflective light.

I'd reccomend a prime 50mm f/1.4 or f/1.8, or if you want a slightly more versatile lens to use everyday then a wide/standard zoom, such as an f/2.8 17-35, 17-40, 17-55, 24-70, 24-85 etc.

Whats your budget? A quick buzz on the internet throws up a Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 macro lens for £300

 

[keenonfish]

Just to play devils advocate here do you really need an SLR is what I would ask! There are occasions where good prosumers can produce perfectly acceptable results even with the aquarium - just look at some of the galleries on various sites to see what I mean!

One major advantage of a smaller sensor of prosumer / compact cameras has is the greater Depth of Field. This means that more of the picture in front, and behind the focal point is acceptable sharp. This isn't so much a problem with a decent flash as you can increase the aperture a bit, but if you are using your built in flash or natural light you might need that lens wide open which means that fish head sharp tail not so sharp etc. They say a compact has equivelant aperture of f22 which is actually almost unusable with a dslr especially for moving objects! To counter this argument an SLR has far superior auto / manual focus systems and are far quicker which helps immensely!

Oh and you need to learn all the techy bits too as it really would be a waste of time don't expect pro results straight out the camera! if you used the camera in auto mode all the time = waste of money really.

Saying that if you are prepared to learn and spend the money (all best shots are usually from dedicated macro lens with one or two good quality flashes and regardless you will never be happy with your gear hehe) then you will be rewarded with first class pictures.

As for which make to get, well Nikonians hate Canons and Canon folk don't love Nikon folk (although POTN I would say is devoid of some of the negative talk of certain Nikon forums and you don't have to sign a disclaimer to say you own Nikon gear #### ) so you need to make your mind up read up and learn what the cameras are capable of I always recommend Steves digicams to read up on models then go to Jessops or whereever to try them out then buy of t'internet

 

[gaz gun man]

One major advantage of a smaller sensor of prosumer / compact cameras has is the greater Depth of Field. This means that more of the picture in front, and behind the focal point is acceptable sharp. This isn't so much a problem with a decent flash as you can increase the aperture a bit, but if you are using your built in flash or natural light you might need that lens wide open which means that fish head sharp tail not so sharp etc. They say a compact has equivelant aperture of f22 which is actually almost unusable with a dslr especially for moving objects! To counter this argument an SLR has far superior auto / manual focus systems and are far quicker which helps immensely!

well the picture I took was taken on f/2.8, handheld and I had to boost the ISO to 500 to get a sharp shot.

Theres no way you'd get results out of pretty much any camera at f/22 that would be useable. Such a small aperture would require a very long shutter speed, which would be fine for a tripod shot for whole tank pictures, but useless for fish pictures.

The camera would just end up boosting the ISO anyway, resulting in very noisy images, especially in todays compact market, where the belief that more megapixels = better images

 

[keenonfish]

Theres no way you'd get results out of pretty much any camera at f/22 that would be useable. Such a small aperture would require a very long shutter speed, which would be fine for a tripod shot for whole tank pictures, but useless for fish pictures.

The camera would just end up boosting the ISO anyway, resulting in very noisy images, especially in todays compact market, where the belief that more megapixels = better images

Well that is pretty much what I said DoF is directly related to image sensor size (not forgetting aperture / focal length and even the size of the image being viewed tbh I don't fully understand the theory) what I said was that a compact camera generally has an equivalent DoF of 22. I can not back this up in a theoretical manner and am mostly telling what I have heard many times, except I will say it is obvious when most compacts that are capable of f2.8 will generally have a much wider DoF than an SLR at similar f# and therefore more of the image will be in focus.

 

[Anguilla82]

cheers for all the replies.

have done a fair bit of photography (although when i was a few years younger!) so am not adverse to getting techy with a camera. This is one of things i hate about the current camera is that its pretty much auto everything, which is great when when you want to take an everyday shot but a real pain in the backside when you want to take a photo of a zoa head in the middle of the display and the camera will only focus on a)the glass, b)the rock behind it, or c)the fish as it swims in front of it at the wrong moment!

think, as suggested, i will take a trip to a camera shop and have a play with a couple.
Rob